Effectiveness of Mother Tongue Based -Multilingual Education Program in Teaching Mathematics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Mother Tongue-Based -Multilingual Education is more often viewed as a structured program of language learning and cognitive development, providing a strong educational foundation in the first language, with successful bridging to one or more additional languages, thus enabling the use of all languages for life-long critical thinking skills that enable learners to operate equally in the language of their ethnolinguistic community, the national language of their nation, and international languages that are used for education and communication (Belaya, 2013). The study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of a mother tongue-based multilingual education program in teaching Mathematics.

METHODS

The experimental research design was used involving three (3) groups. The study was conducted in the Division of Santa Rosa City covering the three sections of grade three in Santa Rosa Elementary School Central III. They underwent experimental research to test the effectiveness of using Mother Tongue in teaching Mathematics. The researcher asked the problems encountered by the teachers of the first district of the division. The descriptive statistics, simple percentage mean and One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

The pupils' achievement in the English instruction is significantly higher than the achievement of those who were in the Mother Tongue and mixed instruction both in the pretest and posttest. There is no significant difference in the results of the teacher -made test as to pretest but there is a significant difference in the posttest. The problems encountered by the teacher in terms of helping children learn to read and write is "pupils cannot easily understand the concept of Mathematics using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction"; learning academic content is "the concepts in Mathematics discourage the learners to learn beyond the global standards of Mathematics principles even taught in the mother tongue language" ; and learning other languages is "learning in mother tongue is confusing for children due to other terminologies in Mathematics".

DISCUSSIONS

It is therefore desirable that English instruction is effective in teaching Mathematics since the pupils in our region are exposed to English and Filipino language. Mother Tongue shall be a supplement in teaching Mathematics. Teachers shall undergo training involving Mathematics Terminologies.